


Resolution

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Tall She Was and Golden-Skinned [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Alternate Universe - Elder Scrolls Fusion, Crossover, Dragon Age Quest: The Wrath of Heaven, Gen, Inner Dialogue, Prologue, Self-Sacrifice, The Breach (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 15:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13297587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: Airanarie, an Altmer from Tamriel, steps forward into a confusing new world called Thedas, where she travelled after a freak accident with the Eye of Magnus. Filled in briefly on the world's language and culture with the help of the spirit of Wisdom summoned by Solas (whom she initially mistakes for Haskill), Airanarie realizes that this unfamiliar realm is in danger akin to the Oblivion Crisis. And decides to stay and help - even if this means she will never see her home again.





	Resolution

They are still there when she awakens, their eyes glinting in the light of the torch that is mounted in a sconce on the wall and traces a small, uneven orange circle that jerks fitfully in the all-consuming blackness of… some kind of thick-walled and very notably damp underground chamber - dungeon? - that she has been brought into.  
  
Two human women. One dark and scowling, her glare burning with almost a stronger fire than the torch; the other pale, quiet, watchful, and somehow more menacing, with an aura of icy cold around her, of the kind that, in her less than fortunate days in the Aldmeri army, Airanarie could feel coating the cruelest of Thalmor justiciars.  
  
These have to be the same women whom she could see, just briefly, more as two looming oblong blurs than actual human figures, in those jumbled, chaotic moments that followed the surge of white light from the Eye of Magnus, and that sickening, gut-clenching sensation, like she was falling from a cliff, and the bizarre vision of… Being chased by giant spiders, with long, skittering fuzzy legs and black, wobbly bellies that had a grotesque manner of curving spikes sticking out of them… And also… Being embraced by a glowing, slightly greenish tinted spectre that, at a glance, appeared naked save for a tall trapezoid hat, straight out of Sheogorath’s realm.  
  
She can understand their speech now, thanks to the magic worked by that odd, human-faced bald elf (whom she, incidentally, also initially mistook for a denizen of the Mad God’s domain - his lack of hair and Breton-like features made her think of Haskill, Sheogorath’s fabled long-suffering chamberlain). And she knows who they are. Not an Imperial and a Nord, as she initially assumed when they had just raced up to her, fading in and out of her hazy line of vision, and bombarded her with questions that she could not understand. No, they are, apparently, from the nations of Nevarra and Orlais - intriguing, colourful spots on an utterly new map that, together with an entire bulky dictionary of an unknown language, was implanted into her mind at the touch of a helpful spirit summoned into her thrumming, aching, confused mind by the not-Haskill to aid her as she lay unconscious on the dungeon floor. The elf - Solas, she thinks he introduced himself as - brought his ethereal friend into her head to make sense of who she was; and, in turn, allow her to learn where she had been tossed by that magical anomaly at the College of Winterhold.  
  
And the spirit has shown her that she has been ripped out of Nirn entirely; carried by the currents of magic past Mundus and Oblivion and Aetherius into an entirely different world. A place called Thedas, where there are many diverse and flourishing kingdoms of humans but mer - elves - have no homeland to call their own, suffering even more hardship than the people of Morrowind after the Red Year; where the dwarves still exist, and magic is as rare as it is feared.  
  
It will take a while to wrap her head around all of this, and to learn how not to make a fool out of herself, as the spirit gave her only cursory knowledge of the realm where she has landed; but the very idea of another world does not at all surprise her. The deep lore of magic holds secrets even more bizarre than this, and she barely scraped its surface during the peaceful days of her youth, when her mother was still alive, and she had the luxury of playing games and reading books and talking both about silly girly things and the the mysteries of the universe (sometimes simultaneously) into the small hours of the morning. The two women, however, seem far more stricken when Solas explains what he’s learned as he helps Airanarie to her feet.  
  
‘Well, who is she?’ the dark, fiery-eyed human asks in a demanding tone. ‘A demon? Some manner of Qunari? Has she tried to corrupt you in any way?’  
  
To that, he responds with a small, half-amused chuckle.  
  
'Oh, no, no, Seeker. The answer is far more astounding than any of us could have surmised. Your prisoner is, in fact, an elf. And she hails from another world. A place far beyond the Fade; with its own continents and regions and peoples that only slightly resemble the humans and elves we all know. Such was the knowledge revealed to me by my friend, the spirit of Wisdom’.  
  
After he is finished, a heavy silence shackles both of his listeners, who, in their shock, even seem to neglect the vital task of breathing - for the next time they remember that they need air, they suck it in with tremendous, hoarse gasping noises at the back of their throats.  
  
'That is not possible!’ the Seeker cries, wringing her arms. 'That goes against everything the Chant dictates! “As there is one world, one life, one death, there is one god, and he is our Maker!” One world, Solas! One world! You are blaspheming!’  
  
Ah, yes. The locals only have one Divine. Like the… Oh, what they were called? The Skaal of Solstheim. How very interesting!.. Airanarie does hope she will live long enough to ponder over this - because the Seeker seems to be dangerously close to whipping out her blade and thrashing it around like a murderous windmill.  
  
'The Chantry has been wrong before,’ the pale human muses cautiously. 'Though we cannot rule out the possibility that the spirits lied to you. Or that this woman forced them to feed you stories to protect her true identity’.  
  
'I can assure you that I have absolute, unshakable trust in Wisdom,’ Solas says, quite dryly, as he looks visibly offended. 'She is a benevolent spirit, dedicated to revealing and sharing knowledge. To craft such an elaborate lie, with such meticulous attention to minor detail, would be against her nature. But we can argue semantics later. Right now, our focus must be on preparations to close the Breach. And since the prisoner bears this Mark upon her hand…’  
  
He nods at the sizzling green gash in Airanarie’s palm, which has been disrupting her thoughts now and again with its steady background pulse of pain. She certainly did not have it back home in Tamriel! It must have appeared some time during her tumble between worlds. A bit of a disconcerting welcome gift from the realm of Thedas.  
  
’…I theorize that applying it to the Breach might contain it, if not seal it completely. She has the power to help us, Seeker. Regardless of origin’.  
  
'Very well,’ the woman sighs, glancing in alarm at something over her shoulder, just as the dungeon’s ceiling is shaken by a faint rumble.  
  
'Leliana, go to the forward camp. See that everything is ready. Take Solas with you. And find that insufferable dwarf while you are at it. I will escort the prisoner into the valley. With utmost scrutiny’.  
  
The other human and the elf vanish into the dark - and soon enough, the Seeker leads Airanarie out as well. She almost doubles over as she walks behind her armed, bristling chaperon, in a constant effort to show that she is ready to respect all laws of this new world and do all that is asked of her, if that’s what it takes to prove, once and for all, that she means the locals no harm, and is merely a displaced traveller who found her way here by accident, with no nefarious plots of invasion or corruption or whatever it is the Seeker thinks she is hatching.  
  
After climbing a flight of rather slippery stone steps and walking up a broad corridor with simple wooden doors lining its sides and a threadbare carpet tossed underfoot, the Seeker pulls Airanarie out into the open, to face a vast, snowy landscape, not unlike the vistas she got used to during her many quiet years of dwelling in solitude in her tiny, overgrown forest hut somewhere amid the ever-wintry wilds of Skyrim.  
  
There is the same carpet of white, which begins with a slightly muddy, flattened rim of a well-tred path, gradually growing cleaner and fluffier as it stretches into softly sloping hills in the distance, with the hardened blue glaze of a lake burning in between, at the foot of the tall silhouetted pine trees that rise in stately rows on the other shore. The sky, too, is flooded with the same green light that Airanarie would so often see when she peeked out of her window at nightfall… Except… Except, no, it’s not the same; instead of being calm and serene like Skyrim’s famed nocturnal rainbows, this light is angry, seething and spitting, not unlike the magical scar rupturing the flesh of her hand - only a thousand times bigger, and far more destructive.  
  
'Is that… The Breach?’ Airanarie asks, her voice wheezing for lack of practice, and shrinks back a pace after the light in the sky coughs out a clot of acidic flame, which zooms over the rooftops of the little houses huddled among the snowy hills, like a nightmarish shooting star, starts a couple of fires in its wake, and then splits apart into several squirming, flying nests of wraiths. Very malevolent wraiths that glide over the heads of the terrified, stumbling people, who have begun to scurry, ant-like, among the scorched buildings, and reach after them with their ghostly claws. Thankfully, no-one gets mortally wounded from what Airanarie can see, but a few people do sink into an unsteady, swaying pose on their knees in the snow, grabbing at their heads as tiny ribbons of red cross their faces. The wraiths, in the meanwhile, take off towards the distant hills, with a drawn-out, hungry screech.  
  
'Yes,’ the Seeker replies to Airanarie’s question, growing anxiously restless as she watches the wraiths float off, too far away for her to catch up with them and slice them up with that sword of hers.  
  
'It’s a massive rift into the world of demons, and it has already laid waste to everything further in the valley’.  
  
'Oh,’ Airanarie murmurs to herself. 'Like… Like an Oblivion gate’.  
  
So this is what has been going on here - and what must have made crossing over into a different world so easy. Thedas’ version of an Oblivion Crisis.  
  
The protective barriers between the mortal plane and the broiling demonic crucible of Oblivion (or, well, the Fade) have been shattered, and monsters are pouring out to terrorize innocent farmers and city dwellers. It might not be long before this hapless realm suffers its own siege of Kvatch. Its own fall of Ald'Ruhn. Its own scourge of the Summerset Isles.  
  
Solas the not-Haskill was right. This Breach needs to be closed. Even if… Airanarie’s heart grows cold and heavy, sinking into the pit of her stomach while she forces herself to study the bleeding green sky without looking away. Even if, with the borders between worlds patched up, she might not be able to return home.  
  
Ah, what does it matter?! What does she matter?! Tamriel is barely a home to her at this point; by Auri-El, she has lived alone in the woods for thirty years! Her family is long gone, and the people she may have cared about have never been allowed too close, have never seen past the walls she has put up around her heart, to shield it from the painful memories of her mother’s death and the Great War. They have all found their own purpose, their own place to belong: Ondolemar has gone rogue for the sake of that girl he’s fallen in live with, the daughter of the Reachman king, no less; and Runil has been reunited with the long-lost child he never knew existed. The child that is supposed to be the Dragonborn of legend. The protector of Nirn.  
  
They will do fine without her. These people right here will not. She is very much inclined to support Solas’ theory: her glowing scar has the same nature as the Breach, and may well be able to act as a sigil to seal it. And once sealed, the Breach might spit her out back into Tamriel, like an Oblivion gate would… Or it might not. But if she does get left on this side forever - so be it. One lost Altmer is a small price to pay in exchange for saving an entire world.  
  
'I will help if I can,’ she tells the Seeker earnestly, 'Whatever it takes’.  
  
Oddly enough, her voice comes out almost joyful… Maybe because it has been so very long since she last made herself useful to other people. It feels uplifting, somehow, to be out of her sheltering woods, making things better.  
  
And the conviction in her words is so sincere, so ardent, that the human raises her eyebrows, and for a tiny sliver of a moment, the wariness and hostility in her eyes gives way to approval.


End file.
